


Too High A Price

by DustyP



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-20
Updated: 2013-05-20
Packaged: 2017-12-12 10:58:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/810813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DustyP/pseuds/DustyP
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Simon remembers events in  Survival</p>
            </blockquote>





	Too High A Price

**Author's Note:**

> Simon's POV

Simon Banks signed the form in front of him, tossed it into his OUT box, then taking off his spectacles, he leaned back and stretched. He needed a break.

Getting up, he went to his coffee machine and poured himself a cup of the hot black liquid.

Sipping gratefully at the coffee, he wandered across to the window separating him from the outer office.

The Bull Pen was full of noise; phones ringing, men talking to their colleagues, the sound of high heels on a hard surface, as a young woman walked across the floor to hand a file to his secretary, Rhonda.

It was business as usual in Major Crime.

He felt as though he was looking at it from a different point of view, this morning.

In fact, ever since he'd got back from the forest where Quinn had almost killed him, he felt as though everything was a little brighter. He and his friends had come through a very perilous situation and Simon recognized this feeling as being just glad that he was alive; that his friends were alive, and relatively unscathed.

Speaking of friends, he smiled faintly as Jim Ellison walked through the outer door, his head turned as he continued a conversation with the other man following just behind him.

Blair Sandburg was limping slightly, his hands busy describing something to Ellison.

Simon smiled again, happy to see the younger men back to their usual bantering selves.

It had been an exhausting few days, with Jim going back and forth to the hospital, coping with the questions the F.B.I. threw at him, and trying to do his job.

Jim pointed to his desk and Simon could read his lips as he told the young grad student to 'sit down'.

Blair ignored him as he stopped by the desks of Rafe and H, as they waved him over, returning their enthusiastic greetings. This was his first day back after his recent hospital stay.

Brown slapped him on the shoulder, and Blair flinched as he rocked back onto his wounded leg.

The large detective stopped grinning and caught the younger man's arm until he could get his balance.

"Sorry, Blair," H said contritely.

Blair patted the hand on his arm and nodded. "It's okay, H, just stumbled."

His face was white, however, and he couldn't quite stand upright, listing to one side as he clutched the edge of Rafe’s desk.

Then Ellison was beside the trio, and after glaring at Brown, guided his friend towards his desk.

"The doctor told you to stay off that leg as much as possible until it has a chance to heal completely," he scolded, helping Blair settle into a chair.

Blair nodded mutely, his face was shining with sweat, and the fact that he didn't protest was testimony to how much he was hurting.

Simon's hand clenched hard around his coffee mug.

It had been almost two weeks since Sandburg had been air-lifted from the forest, he'd been in the hospital for ten days, before the doctor had given in to his pleas to go home.

The aftermath of Quinn's escape, his own kidnapping and the resulting manhunt by the F.B.I. the Sheriff's department and Ellison and Sandburg, to find and rescue him had kept the different departments busy for many days, and even now, Simon was still signing off on various reports needed to close the case.

He could now see the end of the admin paperwork, but the scene out in the Bull Pen, reminded him, if he even needed to be reminded, that the human cost was high, much too high when it involved serious injury to innocent civilians, and friends.

His mind went back to that awful time in the mine shaft, he and Ellison hauling a wounded Sandburg through the tunnel, stopping to catch their breath and listen for Quinn and the insane hunter.

He and Jim had worked feverishly over Blair, trying to staunch the flow of blood from the gunshot wound in his leg, the kid biting his lip to try and stifle the moans of pain that had caused him.

Then Quinn and the hunter coming into the tunnel and Ellison's ruse of setting fire to the bundles of money, halting the pair as their ill-gotten gains started to go up in smoke.

Being left alone in the darkness, with the semi-conscious student while Jim sought for another way out of the trap they were in.

The way he had crouched over Blair when the smoke had started to enter the tunnel; they couldn't breathe and Simon had known they had to surrender to Quinn before they both choked to death.

Stumbling through the smoke, his arm supporting the wounded Sandburg as much as he could, they'd stopped and faced the rifle and murderous gaze of their captor, who had just shot the hunter in the back, and knowing there would be no mercy for either of them now that Quinn had the money he'd stolen. Simon could remember the certainty of knowing he was about to die, and the feeling of helpless sorrow at having the kid share that fate. He shouldn't be here, he should be in his classroom at the University, not chasing killers through a wet forest.

How he deeply regretted the casual remark he'd made to Ellison, which seemed eons ago now, 'to take the kid with you'.

Then the relief when Jim had blown up the shack that housed the dynamite, and the fight which had then ensued.

He tried not to think how close Jim Ellison had come to dropping Quinn into the well; even though he firmly believed that the detective would've stopped before taking that drastic step.

As he saw Jim sit next to his partner, one hand going to his shoulder, as he handed him a glass of water, Simon shook himself free of the bad memories.

They had survived, and while he didn't really want to remember too closely that dreadful journey, being dragged at the end of a rope by a killer, knowing that when his usefulness ended, so would his life.

He would never forget the courage and endurance, of not only Jim Ellison, the ex Army Ranger whose tracking skills and sentinel abilities had allowed him to follow and find him; but also of the youngster he sometimes yelled at for talking too much; of being underfoot; the one he kept telling he was not a cop.

The same one who had shown more courage and loyalty than many a seasoned veteran of the police force.

Simon would be eternally grateful that the kid was recovering, but he knew from seeing that pale face and hunched body that it would be a long road to complete recovery, both physically and emotionally.

Not only for Sandburg, he thought, as he met Jim's gaze as the detective raised his head to look at him through the window.

The detective's look of guilt and remorse for the damage that had been done to the kid's physical body and the trauma that he'd been subjected too, was one that Simon shared.

The fact that Blair had endured all this in the name of friendship and support of his sentinel made both Jim and Simon even more aware of just what a remarkable young man the grad student was.

Simon raised his coffee mug in silent salute and watched as Jim nodded slowly, understanding all too well what his Captain's thoughts had been.

Simon turned, and went back to his desk. Time to put the recent past behind them.

There would be new problems to sort out, but he had the best team that any man could wish for.

A squad of experienced, intelligent detectives, plus one resourceful, annoying, bright-eyed grad student.

Yeah, the bad guys didn’t stand a chance.

The End

Dusty Tyree  
© August 2009


End file.
